I’ve always wanted a son.
I’ve never said that out loud quite that plainly.
I wanted a daughter too. . . I wanted a family.
But somewhere in my imagination there was always a boy.
I even had his name.
Henry.
I liked that it sounded older than he would be.
Kind. . . Steady. . . Wise.
The sort of name a little boy would have to grow into.
I suppose I thought I would grow into being his father the same way.
Someday.
When I was ready.
I am 51 years old now.
And for the first time in my life, I feel ready to be someone's dad.
That's a difficult sentence to write.
Not because I've decided the opportunity is gone.
I don't know that.
Life has surprised me too many times to pretend I know what remains possible.
But I have reached an age where I can no longer casually assume that particular dream will be waiting for me when I finally get around to it.
And there is grief in that.
There is also a lesson.
Because I didn't arrive here accidentally.
I waited.
I had reasons.
Good ones, I thought.
I wanted to be more established professionally. . . more financially secure.
I wanted to know who I was.
I wanted to be with the right woman.
I wanted to become the kind of man who could provide a child with something better than the uncertainty I knew growing up.
Some of that was responsibility.
Some of it was fear wearing a very convincing costume.
And fear is patient.
It will let you call it preparation for decades.
Yesterday I was painting a house.
It was day fifteen of a job I thought would take five.
Every time I believed I was nearing the end, I would walk around another corner and discover something else.
More trim. More scraping. Another repair.
Another section high enough to require someone with equipment and skills I don't have.
I stood there looking at another stretch of trim I somehow hadn't accounted for and felt the energy leave my body.
My shoulders actually dropped.
I wasn't just tired.
I felt defeated.
And standing there, covered in paint, I found myself wondering how many decisions I had made over the years that eventually led to this exact moment.
Not just the decision to take this job.
All of them.
Professional decisions.
Financial decisions.
Things I attempted badly.
Things I abandoned.
Things I was too afraid to attempt at all.
And this thought came to me. . .
Present me is paying for the fear of past me.
Apparently, that's how it works.
Simple as that.
Eventually, life sends the invoice.
Sometimes the bill is fifteen days spent on a five-day job.
Sometimes it's debt.
Sometimes it's a career you spent years talking yourself out of attempting.
Sometimes it's the screenplay sitting in a drawer.
Sometimes it's looking in the mirror and realizing you spent twenty years promising yourself you'd take care of your body tomorrow.
And sometimes it's sitting alone quietly at 51 years old realizing how badly you wanted to hear a little boy call you Dad.
The bill doesn't care whether your reasons were understandable.
It still comes due.
We live in a culture that tells us to visualize the life we want.
Affirm it.
Manifest it.
See it clearly enough and somehow the universe will begin conspiring on our behalf.
I have done plenty of that.
And I know that there is value in knowing what you want.
There is value in imagination.
Value in allowing yourself to see a life before you have built it.
But I have learned something considerably less marketable. . .
Wanting something does not obligate life to give it to you.
You can visualize the career.
You can journal about the marriage.
You can imagine the house.
You can picture the child.
You can want something with all of your heart and still do absolutely nothing consequential enough to make it happen.
Desire without action is private entertainment.
Life is happening while you're getting ready for it.
And some dreams have expiration dates.
No one tells us that.
We're much more comfortable with it's never too late.
Hell. It’s my call to action when you first land on my page.
But here’s the fucking truth.
Sometimes it is.
Sure. . . there are books you can write at 70.
Businesses you can start at 60.
Places you can finally visit at 80.
And then there are opportunities entirely dependent upon biology, timing, another person's willingness, another person's presence, another person's heartbeat.
Some doors don't stay open forever.
You don't get to decide when all of them close.
Maybe this particular realization hurts because there are two empty chairs in my life.
One belongs to the father I wish I'd had.
The other belongs to the child I thought I eventually would.
For most of my life I understood the first one.
I'm only beginning to understand the second.
And somewhere between those two chairs, I started writing these essays.
That hadn't occurred to me until now.
There were things I needed an older man to tell me.
Things about fear.
Love.
Work.
Money.
Self-respect.
Failure.
Alcohol.
Women.
Walking away.
Staying.
Starting over.
What strength actually is.
What it isn't.
Nobody handed me a manual.
So I learned a lot of it the expensive way.
Sometimes humiliatingly.
And now, whenever I finally understand something that would have saved a younger version of me a little pain, I have an almost compulsive desire to leave it somewhere another man might find it.
Not because I know how to live.
Jesus Christ, I have the receipts proving otherwise.
I write because I know what it costs to learn certain things late.
Maybe that's the closest thing I have to explaining why this place exists.
I don't want to turn that into something prettier than it is.
The young men who read my writing are not my sons.
Writing an essay doesn't replace raising a child.
Mentoring someone doesn't magically fill the chair.
And I'm not interested in converting every regret into some blessing so I can pretend everything happened exactly as it was supposed to.
Maybe it didn't.
Maybe some things happened because I was afraid.
Maybe some things didn't happen because I waited.
That is harder to live with.
It is also far more useful.
Because if past me created some of what present me is carrying, then present me is creating the life of someone else right now. . .
. . .the man I will be at 60.
He's out there.
And one day he will inherit everything I am doing today.
My courage or my hesitation.
My discipline or my excuses.
The money I saved or the money I wasted.
The body I cared for or neglected.
The work I finished or kept talking about.
The phone calls I made.
The apologies I offered.
The risks I took.
The love I gave.
The things I finally stopped waiting to feel ready for.
I am building his life right now.
So are you.
Which leaves me with a question I wish someone had asked me twenty years ago. . .
What are you assuming will still be waiting for you when you're finally ready?
Think carefully before you answer.
Because someday you may meet the man who has to pay for your answer.
He will have your face.
And the invoice will have your name on it.
